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Detecting Nuragic Places

Research on the spatial arrangements of Bronze-Age monuments reveals an unusual conformity in the placement of towers and tombs Sardinia’s Bronze Age monuments are impressive and enigmatic remnants of the island’s prehistoric past. The conical stone towers known as nuraghi, numbering some 7000, give their name to the Nuragic peoples who built and used them, and continue to characterize the island’s landscape to this day. Nuraghi is a local Sard word whose etymology is open to debate. The towers were the primary form of residence throughout the second and early first millennia bc, apparently serving as dispersed family farmsteads. The material culture and faunal assemblages point to a relatively egalitarian society practicing subsistence level mixed farming. Contemporary with the nuraghi are megalithic tombs known as tombe di giganti (giants’ tombs). While a few tombs had been excavated and a few towers have been excavated, no one had systematically studied the relationship between the two types of monuments. It was assumed that tombs were placed near nuraghi, end of story. After visiting a number of tower-tomb pairs, I was struck by the conformity of the monumental arrangements, and the sense of familiarity of even newly visited sites. I set out to chart the perceived similarities through spatial analysis. I felt that this spatial patterning could shed light on the mechanisms of social integration that contributed to the remarkable longevity of Nuragic society.

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